North Carolina weather is so stupid that it became a meme.

All North Cackalackians know that our state’s tropical year is a madman’s Rubik’s Cube of 12 wackadoodle mix-and-match semi-seasons that come and go in no predictable sequence. These seasons can include (but are not limited to):

Winter
Fool’s Spring
Second Winter
Spring of Deception
Third Winter
The Pollening
Actual Spring
Summer
Sun’s Front Porch
False Fall
Second Summer
Actual Fall

Items #7 and #12 are the subjects of our story today.

I sometimes think of North Carolina as the freshwater river where seasons, like salmon, come to spawn. They arrive suddenly, flop around with each other in a chaotic mess, and reach their frenzied climax shortly before floating downstream to die somewhere in Florida.

This annual fling is frisky, flirty, a little naughty, and always over too soon. In the same way that your single friend Shane suddenly turns into a comedian whenever your hot girlfriend Linsday is around, Spring and Fall blossom into the best versions of themselves in the presence of North Carolina. When Spring finally commits to being Spring instead of Pollenwinter, it’s the springiest spring in all of Springdomshire. When Fall stops trying to be Summer and Winter at the same time, it achieves maximum Fallocity. Yes indeed, from the smokey hills of Asheville to the sandy shores of the outer banks, North Carolina is that special place where Spring is the Summer of salmon love and Fall falls hardest for our hot girlfriend Lindsay. (Back off, Shane.)

Horny salmon aside, the NC seasons can often feel like playing a losing game of weather roulette. It’s an emotionally exhausting 10-month marathon of hot-today-snow-tomorrow meteorological mood swings that sometimes feels like an abusive relationship because it is one. Our biggest (if only) saving grace is that our yucky winters, swampy mid-months, and sloppy drunk in-betweens are bracketed on either side of summer by some of the most heavenly weather imaginable. Though they never stay long, those precious stretches of peak spring and fall somehow make the rest of the year feel bearable.

It’s during spring and fall that North Carolina becomes the best version of itself, too.

Like its very own coastal songbird, the Painted Bunting, our magical mood-ring landscape dramatically changes color from season-to-season, its plumage molting from the drab pewter greys of winter to the blazing greens of summer to the globby painter’s palette of fall’s cadmium reds, oranges, and yellows.

The molt happens overnight, too. That ugly, dead field you drove past in late March is transformed into a Monet painting by early April. Come October, that fluffy carpet of summer green canopy has exploded into a pyroclastic mushroom cloud of radiant fall fireworks - a gemstoned coral reef of laser red hickories, furnace-steel hawthorns, topaz yellow maples, and leather brown oaks. It’s the kind of beauty that can induce Stendhal’s Syndrome in the spiritually sensitive. It’s the kind of sight that makes you feel lucky to have been alive to see it. This, of course, is why it’s a favorite destination for North Carolina’s most dreaded economy boosters, the Leafers.

(Pro tip: Just avoid the Blue Ridge mountains in October.)

As I wrote in this Thru Hike article, it’s one thing to read about such fall wonders, and another to be immersed in them.

But before we go much further, we have to talk about immersion.

Stolen from Jenny Nicholson

If everything is immersive, nothing is immersive.

“Immersion” is one of those unlucky words that was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

One minute it’s minding its own business, and the next it’s getting a sack wrapped around its head, stuffed into a windowless black van, and held hostage by corporate marketing goons who eventually strangle it to death.

It’s now compulsory for video games, movies, TV shows, theme parks, hotels, restaurants, websites, helpdesk chatbots, and strip mall cellphone shops to offer their users “immersive” experiences. And that’s the problem - what’s on offer here is only an “experience” of immersion, i.e., the feeling of having been immersed in an environment by design. Real immersion doesn’t have to be designed, and in fact often reacts to fabrication in the same way that those little eye floaters seem to dart away from view as soon as you try to look at them.

In other words, no amount of descriptive language, colorful photography, or snappy YouTube sizzle reels can properly convey the feeling of BEING THERE. True Immersion is not a matter of artistic reproduction, it’s a matter of personal connection. And, as it happens, connection is exactly what Three Rivers Land Trust does best.

After all, it’s right there in their slogan.

“Connected to the Land. Committed to Conservation.”

This simple mission can be read as two separate statements, or it can be read as a linear sequence of events.

Three Rivers Land Trust is committed to conservation because they’re connected to the land, and it’s only when people feel authentically connected to the land they feel authentically committed to conservation. After all, what is conservation at its core? It’s the process of loving the land so much that we act on the need protect it from the eradicative effects of overdevelopment. To love the land is to naturally desire its protection, and to desire its protection is to naturally take action.

There are many ways to take action for conservation. Some are social, some are financial, some are bureaucratic, and some are federal. However, supporting local conservation can sometimes be as simple as going on a scenic hike, breathing in the fresh mountain air, and sleeping under the stars. By attending events like the Thru Hike, people are empowered to take a stand the land they love while having an adventure that will last a lifetime.

No matter what form of action one chooses to take, it always starts with real immersion and connection.

Spring

The Spring Thru Hike, like its Fall counterpart, is an unforgettable 4-day, 3-night, 40-mile adventure across the full length of the legendary Uwharrie National Forest.

Even though this landmark is the youngest national park in North Carolina, its iconic mountains are quite literally the oldest in the world. Journeying across these ancient landscapes, it’s impossible to not feel connected to the deep history of North Carolina. Unfortunately, I kind of missed out on that part.

It’s not always possible to indulge in the soft fascination of nature while juggling multiple cameras and chasing after magic moments. On top of that, I also had to provide live updates to the event on social media, which required a stable internet connection, which does not exist in said oldest mountains in the world.

At the time I lived in Greensboro, which was an hour and a half away from the locations of the hike. By then I was no stranger to hour-long commutes, because that’s how long it took me to drive to the Three Rivers office every day. However, the Thru Hike required me to meet up at 2-3 different aid stations per day, each of which was scattered along different, isolated spots of the Uwharrie Trail. More complicated still, their respective arrival times were scheduled hours apart from each other, meaning that my days would potentially be spent scrambling to get footage, traveling a half hour to nearby towns in search of wifi pit stops, and probably getting lost a million times in between (more on that later.)

There had to be a better way.

Cabin in the woods.

Tom was an old bearded guy in a big Panama hat and a Prozac shirt. The first thing he told me was a dirty joke about birds (spoiler: the punchline was “swallows”). I knew I was gonna like this guy.

“Watch out for the rattlesnakes,” he said, “Lost my last dog to one last year. They like to hang out under the steps here. And in that yard over there. And sometimes right here. You see that fenced in area?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Shit load’a snakes. Don’t go there.”

Tom was showing me around the cabin that I’d be staying at for the next four days and three nights. Tom is a good friend of the land trust, and when he heard that I needed a temporary headquarters for the hike, he offered up his little cabin in the woods.

Did I mention it was a little cabin in the woods? Vertically it was about as tall as me with outstretched arms, and horizontally it was about as wide as two of me. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. I like little spaces. I find them cozy. They make me feel like a chipmunk in a tree hollow on a rainy day. The cabin wasn’t small, it was just fun-sized.

Tom warned me that there was no internet, but assured me there was a fancy pants gas station about ten minutes up the road whose wifi I could steal. No problem, I thought. I’d film my content on the trail, schedule my posts at the cabin, scoot on down to the fancy pants gas station, slap it online, maybe grab a bag of snacks, and head back for a quiet evening of catching up on personal artistic projects.

It was all very romantic, you see. I was going to be like Jack Kerouac in Big Sur. The peaceful isolation and natural surroundings would tease out the very best of my artistic instincts, letting them roam free like so many poisonous snakes. After months of neglect, I’d finally have the peace and quiet I needed to make a real dent in my creative pursuits.

Just kidding.

The cabin was located about 3 miles down a rough, hilly, uneven, pothole-riddled gravel road.

My poor little Sentra was not made for this kind of life. Not only did I drive it 100 miles a day to and from work, but I also forced it up rocky inclines, across unpaved roads, through grassy fields, and deep into muddy puddles. To say that it was “kind of falling apart” would be like saying this article is “kind of overwritten.” Its struts and shocks were absolutely shot. You could hear it coming from (literally) a mile away. If you want a high quality and very accurate comparison, just imagine Howl’s Moving Castle, but smaller.

(And if you’ve never seen Howl’s Moving Castle, stop reading this and go watch it.)

Like my car, my plan was starting to disintegrate. The simple, efficient, and highly romantic scenario I’d imagined was now anything but. The road to and from the cabin was tearing my vehicle apart at the seams, I didn’t have enough time between shoots to properly organize my footage, and by the first day I’d already started feeling creepy loitering around the fancy pants gas station three times in a row.

All of this was challenging, but it still wasn’t the deal breaker. The deal breaker came in the form of driving directions.

Lost in translation.

Whatever part of the human brain it is that assists human beings with navigation - yeah, I wasn’t born with that.

It’s embarrassing, it frustrates people, and it frustrates me even more, but it’s just how it is. I’m even bad at navigating the town I’ve lived in for years, so imagine how much worse I was in the middle of nowhere without wifi or map signals.

And sure, to be fair, I was given “directions.” Kind of. Vaguely. But not really. What I was given instead were “approximate” directions. Why approximate? Because the meetup stations didn’t have exact addresses, or even exact coordinates that I could get to before losing my signal. To get around this, everyone was given directions “close to” but not exactly “at” our destinations, and we were assured that once we got close we, quote, “Couldn’t miss it.”

And that right there is where everything went wrong, because, you see, I can miss it.

What ended up happening was something like this: try to find the place > get lost. Try to call someone > no signal. Drive 25 miles into town for wifi > call someone > get told, “Try again, you can’t miss it.” Try again > miss it. Repeat.

All the while my car is banging and clanging along one unpaved road after another, I’m bouncing up and down in my seat, and the frustration is filling my face with oily hot rage. Inevitably, I got to every location late, hustled to get the coverage I needed, hurried back to the cabin, banged and clanged along more dirt roads, scrambled together some social media posts, sped up to the fancy pants gas station, and rushed in a panic to the next meetup station.

This was obviously not sustainable. After just one day, I threw in the towel. I packed up the cabin, thanked Tom for his generosity, bid the snakes farewell, and decided to try my luck at commuting 3 hours a day.

Surprisingly, after that, things actually went pretty smoothly! The Spring Thru Hike was a smash hit, the events went off without a hitch, and Three Rivers got some much needed additions to their growing photo library.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Fall.

Unlike my misadventures in spring, the Fall Thru Hike was a breeze! (Other than more of those goddamn “approximate” directions.)

This time around, I had the help of my crazy talented and super fun photographer friend, Katy Perry. Katie did an awesome job snagging the majority of the photos, but I still managed to sneak in a few.

Connected and inspired.

The Spring and Fall Thru Hikes connect people to the land and to each other, inspiring a greater appreciation for the natural spaces we depend on and the importance of conserving them for future generations.

Despite its ups and downs, complications and frustrations, the Thru Hikes were two unforgettable adventures. By the time they drew to a close, everyone involved felt closer to each other and to land we call home.

People often think that North Carolina’s spotlight environments can only be found in the Western elevations or the Blue Ridge parkway, but almost every region in NC has its own iconic landscapes. The Uwharries are a potent reminder of what these lands looked like before any of us were here, and what’s at stake if we don’t take action to protect regions like this from the endless demand for more development. People need places to live, but they also need places to feel connected and inspired. We must find a balance between the two, so experiences like the Thru Hike can be enjoyed by those who come after us.

Being There. Or: Why I Hate the Word “Immersive.”